20 Years Later, Johnny Depp’s $118 Million Hidden Gem He Called an Amazing Experience Surges Back Into the Streaming Top 10
Twenty years on, Tim Burton’s stop-motion favorite Corpse Bride is rising from the grave to crack HBO Max’s top spots, with FlixPatrol placing it in the top 10 as of October 14, 2025.
Some movies fade into the algorithm. Some crawl out of the ground twenty years later and crash the party. Tim Burton's stop-motion gem 'Corpse Bride' just did the latter.
'Corpse Bride' is suddenly charting again
As of October 14, 2025, 'Corpse Bride' is sitting in the top 10 by viewer count on HBO Max, according to FlixPatrol. Yes, a 2005 Johnny Depp-led, gloomily romantic, stop-motion fairy tale is back among the platform's top titles. Not exactly the rewatch you expect to snowball in 2025, but here we are.
Why the revival now?
Two big swings here. One: Johnny Depp has been very visible again, and a chunk of the public is back in his corner following his very public split and legal war with ex-wife Amber Heard. Two: the movie is a reminder of a craft that has mostly slipped out of the mainstream. Stop-motion has a texture and a mood you just do not get from straight CGI, and Burton in that lane is a capital-V vibe.
Depp on how his kids reacted
Back when he spoke to Blackfilm.com about 'Corpse Bride,' Depp told a story that says a lot about the movie's pull on little brains with short attention spans.
"That was another amazing experience. Lilly Rose was sort of ready for this kind of thing and loved it. My boy, three years old, the attention span is quite short. He wants to go break something, run. He sat on my lap for the entire film and was glued, just riveted. Loved it, reacted well to the music, quoting lines."
Burton + Depp: the goth pop hits, the odd detours, the cult status
When those two team up, history tends to stick. They launched their partnership with 'Edward Scissorhands,' the melancholic fairy tale that helped turn Depp from teen idol into capital-A Actor. Fun bit of lore: Tom Cruise reportedly flirted with that role and asked a 'stupid' question that helped nudge him out of contention. From there, they swung through 'Ed Wood' and 'Sleepy Hollow' before hitting the candy-colored fever dream of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' where Depp drew on some truly odd inspirations for Willy Wonka… and spooked himself in the process.
'Corpse Bride' followed as one of the first times Burton personally directed animation (he co-directed), then came the blood-soaked, sing-your-heart-out horror musical 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,' which landed because that gothic severity actually works in a musical if you commit. After enough of these, the duo locked in their rep as a dependable, off-kilter box office draw that often ages into cult territory.
Why we rarely get stop-motion at this scale anymore
Short version: time and money. Stop-motion requires moving physical models 24 times for every single second of footage. Getting that right can take several dozen minutes for a single second of usable animation. Stretch that over a feature and you are talking two to three years just on animation, with an army building and repainting replacement parts (3D-printed faces, limbs, set pieces) frame by frame, thousands of times over. CGI, for all its headaches, is generally faster, more flexible, and cheaper at scale. That is why 'Corpse Bride' now reads as both a storybook romance and a bit of a lost art exhibit.
Want to revisit the Burton/Depp run?
- Ed Wood (IMDb 7.8/10) — Box office: $5.8 million — Stream/Rent/Buy: Amazon Video
- Corpse Bride (IMDb 7.4/10) — Box office: $117 million — Stream: HBO Max
- Edward Scissorhands (IMDb 7.8/10) — Box office: $86 million — Stream: Disney+
- Alice in Wonderland (IMDb 6.4/10) — Box office: $1.02 billion — Stream: Disney+
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (IMDb 7.3/10) — Box office: $153 million — Stream: Paramount+
- Sleepy Hollow (IMDb 7.3/10) — Box office: $206 million — Stream: Paramount+
- Alice Through the Looking Glass (IMDb 6.2/10) — Box office: $299 million — Stream: Disney+
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (IMDb 6.7/10) — Box office: $474 million — Stream: Netflix
- Dark Shadows (IMDb 6.2/10) — Box office: $245 million — Stream: Prime Video
So, yeah: a 2005 stop-motion ghost romance is unexpectedly back in the zeitgeist. Credit Burton's meticulous toybox, Depp's renewed visibility, and the fact that even in a 4K/AI-everything world, handmade magic still hits a nerve.